Weekend Recap 4/15-17/10

I don't often do weekend recaps, but this was a good one, so... it's worthy.

Last week Monday, I bought Steve a house warming gift and on Thursday we got it put together:

We had some ground beef, so burgers were in order!  They turned out absolutely delicious.  Steve mixed an egg, crackers, chopped onion, and shredded cheese in with the beef before cooking.  YUM.

Burgers were great, Friday night was great, it was good to see boyfriend with his manly grill standing outside and doing his thing, even if he did have to put his winter hat on (Friday was WINDY as hell!!).

Saturday we went up to my dad's house for grilled steak and lobster.  Not only do I love going up to my dad's house because I'm a daddy's girl, but he always cooks us gooooood food too!  I also have a bit of news to share - my dad and his wife (those new or newer around my blog should know that my parents have been divorced for about 11-12 years now) are having a baby.  Quick little back story, as someone my age generally doesn't get younger siblings... my dad is 54 and his wife just turned 36.  So she is of good age for having a child, where as if she were in her 50's... it'd be scary!  So anyhow, I've known this since I've been back from Hawaii, just now deciding to share as it took me a bit to adjust to.  Well, Raquel is starting to show a bit, so it was cute to see that.  There were also a few ultrasound pictures of the little blob.. which... it's not much to talk about at this point.  They are due in October, so .. I'm going to be a big sister in October!

Sunday was a day of work and home improvement!  Sadly, this is now exciting to me.  As you may remember, a couple of weeks ago we took down all the wallpaper in our bedroom - that wall paper had been on there for like 200 years, I'm sure, so there was a lot of glue and a few small areas with paper left.  We bought a chemical to mix with water and we then had to s.c.r.u.b. the shit out of our walls.  Hard work, but so worth it now being able to run your hands up and down the wall and have it be smooth.  I'm not even sure how long it took - a few hours easily.  No pictures because the wall looks no different, it's just ready to be patched up, sanded, primed and painted... AND... we have colors picked out now!!  I'm so excited to have this room finished!
Afterwards, we went to downtown Anoka to grab a bite to eat - we went to Jake and Elwood's BBQ Joint (no website that I could find) - it was pretty tasty!  I got the pulled pork sandwich (I have a new found love for pork since Hawaii) and Steve got a half rack of pork ribs; for sure need to go back and try out a couple other menu items!  We then walked to our new favorite ice cream shop, Two Scoops and got ice cream :)
After dinner we wanted to stop at Home Depot - we had several gift cards totaling over $600!!  Crazy shit, huh?  So, for the past several weeks we've been thinking of things that we absolutely need for the house, not just random stuff we want.  Last night we made the trip to HD and filled up our cart pretty good... leaving us with just over $400 left.  What did we buy?

• A Rake
• A shovel for digging up ugly plants and bushes
• A broom for the garage
• A 100ft hose
• A sprinkler
• 2 motion detecting lights for our garage
• A quart of high gloss paint (for the small portion of wall in the den that did not get white board paint)

Last but not least, we got this beauty:

• A 12 gallon Wet/Dry Vac!  Steve and I clean the shit out of our cars in the summer, so that right there is a good enough reason to need this.  Not to mention all the home projects we want to do, this thing will come in so handy!!  I kind of can't wait to use it.

We still need these things and didn't buy them yesterday because we either want to check craigslist first, it couldn't fit in Steve's car, or we need to do some measuring: Ladder, Lawn Mower, bathroom fan motor, and  bits and pieces for putting in a new toilet (we have the bowl and tank but need the other stuff).

The other joyous part of our night last night was being offered a FREE granite counter top, sink, and faucet for our (pink) bathroom.  You see, we do eventually plan to make that bathroom 100% pink free - so this counter top will help us save $300-$400 when that time comes.

The toilet parts mentioned above are to replace the pink toilet... my mom has a bowl and tank that are brand new, we need a wax ring, flange, and some piping to replace the current stuff.  Our pink toilet is a water hog, it seriously takes 5 minutes to fill back up and it only flushes the toilet paper about 50% of the time.  So that'll likely be going before we do the complete bathroom remodel, because it's necessary.

All in all - we had a pretty awesome and rewarding weekend!  My arms are sore today... and I have the second installment of Zumba tonight... that'll be interesting!